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Tom's Hardware has a nice roundup of some of the new shiny hardware for February '08. Everything from a screaming fast 2 GHz DDR3 to liquid cooled cases and back again. "Unlike previous Zalman cases that used a heat pipe assembly, the LQ1000 has a traditional water pump and flexible hose for connecting the case's sinks to CPU and graphics coolers. A passively-cooled finned side panel and fan-assisted rear radiator remove heat, while a lighted flow indicator shows the bottom-mounted pump in action."

I should add that it loaded in another tab, so I couldn't see it.. and I had MPD playing (blocking other sound devices), so I didn't hear anything either.. all I saw was the screen moving around. I downloaded the source with wget and took a look, and I'm fairly sure I can now guess what I would have seen if I hadn't loaded it in another tab =P

Please stop linking to "articles" on the page-o-ads tomshardware site and making them money. They have a hardware roundup every month; there's no need to link to them just to improve their ad revenue stream.

I used to be a big fan of Tom's Hardware. Back when Tom Pabst was actually involved with the day to day operations of the site, last I remember they sold the whole shebang to some other company, good for them. But it's been mess for a long time now, I can't bring myself to read a full article there anymore... It's a shame really. IMHO

All this looks nice. I have to get the ddr3 memory in my system i heard the latency is LOW. Now for the liquid cooled cases call me crazy but I've always been skeptic of having anything liquid around my electronics. I'll stick to the traditional antec 900 gaming case with the 120mm fan along with like 4 other 80mm fans. That keeps my system running cool enough!!!

I'm not sure who told you that DDR3 RAM was low latency, but the statement is dead wrong. If you RTFA, you'll see that the new 2+GHz DDR3 has a CAS 10 latency!! While it's true that it's clocked more than double a typical DDR2 module @ 800mhz, these DDR2 modules are typically CAS 4 or 5, and timings can sometimes be tightened even further. The throughput of DDR3 memory is certainly boosted greatly over DDR2, but no matter how you measure it, memory latency has not seen the same improvement.

I've been buying quality RAM for like a decade now, paying attention to timings and bandwidth and so on, but when it comes to RAM, I have to admit that in all my gaming experience (which is extensive enough), I have seen *tangible* benefits from increasing memory bandwidth (by switching dual channel mode on/off), but I have never been able to establish a *tangible* benefit or detriment to my general computing or gaming by tightening or loosening my RAM timings.I understand the technical details on w

Slashdot posted an article done by a tech site that benchmarked different RAM latencies, and they basically found that you're getting some very low performance benefits. I think it was something like 2%, and 1 or 2 FPS. Can't find the article with a quick search, sorry.

The only way you're going to see latency cause large effects on performance is if you turn off the cache on your processor, or run some kind of program that always results in cache misses (which isn't at all realistic). The whole point of cache is to mask the effects of latency. For example, if you have a cache with a 98% hit rate (meaning that only 2% of all memory accesses need to wait on memory, which is fairly realistic for today's processors), then if you doubled your memory latency, your performance (

That was a main reason for me to switch to water cooling - blissful quietness, instead of sounding like I parked next to a wind tunnel, or an airport. Liquid systems are fairly common now, and have had the kinks worked out. I never had a water leak.

It's much more commonplace now, and has been for a few years. I believe Apple ship a water cooled G5. That said, sometimes the cost outweighs the performance. My friend has the same system as me pretty much, but he's watercooled his CPU and done some other tricks. He spent £150 (at least) on his cooling system. I've bought replacement fans, my CPU cooler is Zalman. It was a real bastard to get on, but my CPU idles at only 5c above his and my load temp is about 15c higher. He's kinda regretting

The only reason I might consider water cooling is to make the machine quieter. Especially for media centers and such, I'd rather pipe the heat to a massive heatsink with a big, slow, quiet fan than have the number of fans I have in there now. I just haven't seen a good solution yet for my machine, and I don't have the cash to drop on it.

I upgraded my case recently. Went from a little box thing that I'd hacked pieces out of over the past eight years, to a brand new things with fans and perspex all over the place. It's massive too, I could easily fit my old box inside it with plenty of room to spare. The thing that surprised me most, was even with a 320mm fan on the side, a 240mm on the front and top - it's quieter. The only thing that REALLY bugs me is the LEDs now. Stupid things light up my room.

It's traditional for high performance rigs. If someone wants to spend a lot of money on a computer, liquid cooled has been the standard for a while. Considering how much I'm willing to spend on a computer, it's a little ridiculous, but if you're going to spend over $3,000, why not?

Oh I don't know. I'm in the market for a new case and I've noticed that there's no good guide for what to look for in a good case.

SPCR [silentpcreview.com] has one. Ofcourse it's dedicated to silence, but they also keep an eye on other useful features, like cable management. Conclusion: get an Antec, preferably a P182 or a P150/Solo.

As for the PSU's A good PSU will save you a LOT of heartache.

The things I recently learned about this are: A 300W PSU is plenty for most people, the Seasonic S12 line of PSUs are among the quietest and very reliable, Antec PSUs are not so reliable, and keep an eye on the efficiency of your PSU.

Same with a good MB, but a PSU affects more components.

But a motherboard is more complex. A PSU simply has to work and not fail.
Anyway, here,

I don't think it's wise to "be up to date" with the latest and greatest hardware. Obviously it's essential to know what's going on with current technology, but I find trying to keep up with the shiniest, fastest hardware out just makes me depressed that the top-of-the-line hardware I just bought a month ago is already second rate.

seriously though your "second rate" hardware is now and will be perfectly capable of performing well for a few years to come (assuming you actually bought decent hardware), so just enjoy it and care not about the new stuff until you have a need to get new stuff again, its that simple!

Since the hardware experts are all here and you're all complaining about Tom's Hardware's advertisements and novelty/enthusiast equipment, can anyone recommend a good hardware review site, especially for (comparative) beginners? I'm a graphic designer and could use some advice on buying a new computer that's more detailed than, "buy the mac that fits in your budget." And even if the best advice really is to buy that mac, I'd be a lot more comfortable paying it's thousand dollar price tag if I knew why.

I spend most (95%) of my time in applications. Photoshop, Illustrator, etcetera. Those will run fine on either OS.
Yes mac is UNIX, but it doesn't make a bit of difference to me; I'm using my OS for peripheral hardware management and file wrangling.
On the other hand, I obviously don't want to take the performance hit from Vista, and XP32 is limited to 2 gigs of ram which sounds suboptimal. I've heard nothing good about XP64. How much ram can OS X support for a professional workstation?
And, again, anyone

The new MacPro supports up to 32 GB of RAM and is the best option for a true pro workstation. I would purchase my monitors, hard drives and additional RAM separately as Apple tends to mark those up significantly. Just configure the high-end model -- dual 3.2Ghz quad-core xeons -- with the minimal specs and install the rest yourself. It's fairly easy to do.
Such is my advice to you.

I spend most (95%) of my time in applications. Photoshop, Illustrator, etcetera. Those will run fine on either OS.

I obviously don't want to take the performance hit from Vista, and XP32 is limited to 2 gigs of ram which sounds suboptimal. I've heard nothing good about XP64. How much ram can OS X support for a professional workstation? And, again, anyone know of a good hardware or buying guide sorted by intended use?

The "performance hit" from Vista might not be a problem with the impending release of Service Pack 1 and the supposed workstation-class driver quality of Quadro and FireGL video cards.

The Mac Pro is a nice option IF your needs are not met by a single quad-core processor and 8GB of dual-channel 800MHz ECC DDR2 memory. Unfortunately (IMO), Apple doesn't offer a decent single-processor workstation option that doesn't use FB-DIMMs.

Other replies have suggested three good sites with "system guides" (Tech R

Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]. They aren't pure hardware review, but they do a good job and have much more insightful articles. Really, the difference between a Mac and a PC any more is the operating system and the fit and finish. The only reason to use a Mac is if you need/want OSX. Not a bad reason to use it, but that's the main differentiator between Macs and PC's. That, and design. Macs tend to have a certain spartan, minimalist yet functional design that appeals to a lot of people. It fits with their Ikea furnit

I wouldn't imagine it would be really hard to build a machine for a graphics designer. Here's how I would do it:1. Get some really nice display(s)2. Appropiate video card to drive those display(s)3. A lot of ram (4-8GB+)4. A motherboard that will support the above, preferably with some room to expand atleast the ram in the future5. A reasonable higher end CPU, faster is better of course, but the bang-for-the-buck ratio isn't that great here6. Fill in the details such as optical drive, harddrive(s), c

You were modded "Funny", but I would have modded you "insightful". I was a faithful TomsHardware reader(back in the Quake days, even), and the page has grown so disgustingly difficult to navigate, that I just don't bother anymore.

Today I visited them again, just to see if things have improved, and I gave up at by the 3rd page. It's ridiculous.

Is it just me, or is everything in that article big and bulky? It's all RAM that's been made faster by adding cooling fins the size of bricks to them and other hardware made for running a server. I realize that all these hardware sites pander to the extreme gaming crowd, but where is the sleek and small?

Instead of the case larger than some bookshelves, where is the one designed to run silent and unnoticed by my TV or under my desk? Instead of the super ram and massive hard drive racks, where is the clever wireless network storage solution that will move media around my house? Instead of the computer case with a big fat LCD screen built into the front, where is the sleek standalone screen that that can wirelessly connect to the server in the basement and display pictures when not in use?

I don't think anyone is surprised to discover that by making everything twice as big, loud and hot you can get the most blazing performance. How about showing me something that impresses me instead?

It sounds like you should be looking at Silent PC Review [silentpcreview.com] instead. They focus more on how you can get a moderately powerful computer without it being obtrusive. Maybe a little bit extreme at times, but always good info.

Seconded. I knew very little about recent hardware until Silent PC Review taught me almost everything I know. Although AnandTech [anandtech.com] is also pretty good, and has some very helpful people on its forum.

The appleTV is limited to 160GB hard disk (can it be expanded easily, or is it limited to a 2-1/2" drive?), and can only render 720p.(Though, I will be the first to admit that I am not going to get into the 720p/1080i battle here since the future is all 1080p or better anyway. Still, anything that can do 1080i can usually do 720p).

But, I'm curious, has anyone tried to get beyond these limits (and the DRM associated with Apple), with a linux installation? If so, it might be viable.

If you're running linux, the 1080p problem goes away (it's a software limitation, at least AFAIK). HD limitation should also not be a problem, even with 2.5" discs, that goes up to 320, and the usb port provides extra storage possibilities. 'Course the best solution is a big, loud, file server somewhere else in the house with the media shared over the network.

And, I agree that a big, honkin' server spitting out content (wirelessly!) is a great idea -- my first thoughts were for a diskless set top box. But, then I realized that there are times when I want to take my content with me somewhere, and having it (or some of it) in that very box would be convenient -- hence the desire for a big disk there (500 GB is nite, 1TB will be better!)

Yes, external disks and remotely served content and alleviate this, but I'd rather take one box with me ra

I'm looking for something almost exactly like this for a MythTV box, but powerful enough to act as a small mail/web server (has to run Java servlets). I'm not sure those amazingly cool VIA processors are really powerful enough for what I want, but I do like their low power consumption for a server I'm going to have permanently turned on in my living room.

Haven't tried running apache on it yet, or servelets, but native building isn't THAT much of a pain... yeah, it takes a couple of hours to build ALL of xorg 7.3, but it is bearable and makes turning around small changes easier.

I would think it could do the job of a light server if it isn't rendering HD video.

You could always buy a board to play with for around $350 plus the cost of a RAM stick: my setup is expensive only because of the DVDROM, big hard disk, and fancy case.